The weather was horrible, it was raining cats and dogs. Despite this, a nice crowd gathered to see a great show.

In order to get the fire swirling and some of the background, I dragged the shutter at 1/3s. The auto-focus of the Canon 5D decidedly did not feel up to the task, so I used f/8 for a good depth-of field and focused manually. These choices left me to use ISO 400 in order to expose the fire right.

I then fired the flash on ETTL with -1EV compensation to Sanja properly. Judging by the recycle time, the flash was firing full pop.

Looking at the pictures on the camera LCD after the show, I thought the whole effort was wasted. After I got home, warm, and dry, I had another look on the computer and felt much better. 🙂

Walking the streets, I came upon a fascinating construction site. An older concrete building was being torn down to make room for some modern apartment buildings.

As I watched, the last glow of sunlight disappeared and the moon became the brightest object in the sky. The rubble and the construction equipment turned into silhouettes, giving them a strange quality.

Nightfall Construction

The times when the sun appears and disappears from the sky are often the best times for photography because light is most interesting then. Nightfall certainly is the most convenient of these times – I don’t have to get up early. 😉

Just after sunrise the light was still warm and yellow-orange, but the sky was already blue with just a bit of color haze over the horizon. You can tell it is still cold by the condensation on the side of the building (that is what the patches are).

Constructing Sunrise

The lines of the cranes and the building make an interesting composition and the warm light goes well with the yellow metal of the cranes which in turn contrast nicely with the desaturated gray of the building.

Last week we experienced some lovely fall weather. I was driving when the storm clouds parted to let the sun light up a rapeseed field. I stopped the car at the next safe opportunity and ran out with my camera before the light changed again.

It turned out that the weather stayed like this for a few minutes more than I anticipated and it was on the way back that I got the best images of the oak tree with the orange leaves in the bright yellow and green rapeseed field.

Oak Tree in a Rapeseed Field

Much to my chagrin, I was only carrying a JPEG-only tiny compact camera. This really shows at larger print sizes, but for online viewing it is a moot point.

Aside from the cliches that there is no substitute for the right light and that the best camera is the one you have at hand, there is another lesson that I draw from this experience:

Wear sturdy boots when you take a walk in the fields or spend an hour cleaning up your dress shoes. (Yes, it I did. ;-))

Lately, we have experienced some trouble with our oven. Overcoming these difficulties (by application of an oven thermometer and dialing in some temperature compensation) my wife has managed to bake one of her wonderful cheesecakes to her satisfaction again. Here is what it looked like in all of its scrumptious goodness before our guests found it:

Cheesecake with Pink Rose.

I think that Andrew will be most pleased; now that harmony has been restored, my wife can try his delicious cheesecake recipe. 🙂

In case you are interested, I deliberately underexposed by about -2 EV to get rich, saturated colors. Yes, the browns are now very dark, so the edges look like they may have been baked a bit crispy. If this was for a cookbook (instead of a mood shot), I might use a mask in Photoshop to lighten the edges of the cake. As it stands, I prefer the mysterious, moody richness hinted at in this image.